


Heavy Bodies

by ASongofSixpence



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: A Series of Vignettes, Canon Compliant, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Head Rubs, Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-11 15:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17449313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASongofSixpence/pseuds/ASongofSixpence
Summary: A study of Barry and Lup's relationship, as looked at through five different types of touch.





	1. Easily

**Author's Note:**

> I've completed this fic, but thought I might try staggering the posting; I've always liked having a fic I knew I could look forward to once a week! This will be posted every Thursday until it's finished.  
> (Tags will update as each chapter is posted, to accurately reflect the contents.)

It’s eight months into the year, and according to Barry’s calculations the Light should have fallen in the quadrant of the southern hemisphere they’re currently exploring. They’ve been skimming over the surface for the past few weeks, occasionally stopping at the settlements that dot the extensive mountain range they’re flying over to ask if anyone has heard tale of it. The Light has the tendency to make waves once it falls, and they’ve all grown quite good at distinguishing fact from fiction when it comes to talk of a mysterious spirit in the woods, or the nearby village that’s begun to build strange new tools, or an island that sings a siren song so loud seasoned fisherman have dashed themselves against the rocks to answer it. But there’s no such talk this cycle. They’ve found no trace of the Light, and Barry is starting to doubt his math.

The living room and kitchen area of the Starblaster are what someone very polite might call _open-concept_. The ships designers had prioritized conserving space and emphasizing utility, which lead to the Starblaster’s common areas being somewhat multi-purpose. The living room is just an extension of the kitchen, which means that as Barry pores over his notes at the dining room table, he’s sharing space with Lup and Taako, who appear to be baking something. Everyone else has retreated to their bunks for the evening, but the two of them continue to flit around, having half-sentence long conversations and occasionally singing nonsense at each other. Their presence would be comforting if it weren’t suddenly loud and overwhelming, competing for space with the thoughts that are chasing their way around Barry’s head. He doesn’t think either Lup or Taako notice him rising from the table and moving out to the deck. If they do, neither bother to glance his way.

The space around the deck is spelled to keep them insulated from the outside world. Most of the time it’s there to stop them from getting sucked into space, but right now it’s cutting them off from the snow and wind blowing across the planet, which means Barry can walk right up to the side and look down without getting swept overboard.

They’re currently floating over a mountain pass. At the bottom there is a huge, five-sided lake, which the locals call All-Giver. Davenport had been worried about landing the Starblaster on the sheer slopes of the mountainside, so he’d leveled it off a couple miles above the highest peak and gone to bed. That was a perk of the bond engine; the ship could idle for hours without the need for fuel. With his hands on the railing Barry can feel it humming now, just barely, under his fingertips, working hard to keep them all alive.

The air is cold, and would be too thin to breathe were it not for the Starblaster regulating the oxygen levels on deck. Barry exhales, watches it fog in front of him, then inhales. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Until his breath is too cold to condensate and he feels the chill burning at the bottom of his lungs.

He’s upset. _That’s fine_ , he tells himself. It’s upsetting to be wrong, especially when the stakes are high. Especially when the game doesn’t make sense and the outcome is always the same, no matter how hard you work. The worlds they spend a year living in, learning about, they die, or are damaged irreparably. Ten worlds, now. That’s upsetting.

He will have to tell Davenport in the morning, that he must have calculated wrong, though he’s not sure how that could be. Perhaps the light _is_ here, but somewhere they can’t see. Perhaps it is at the bottom of All-Giver, or in a cave so dark even it cannot shine bright enough to be seen.

Barry thinks about being at the bottom of a lake, or deep in a cave. He thinks how quiet it would be. How still. Like death, except real. Something he could hold onto for longer than a moment, before life was struck back into him. Again. Again. Ten worlds. Ten lives.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Someone has stepped out onto the deck with him. Barry doesn’t want to turn, lest they see the tears on his face, but he knows it’s Lup. He shakes his head.

“I made tea, do you want some?”

Another head shake. He swipes the back of his hand across his face, trying to be nonchalant.

“Liar.” Her voice is close now, just to his left. A _plink_ , and she’s set the mug down on the railing. It’s precarious, even with the Starblaster’s soft, unhurried trek through the sky. “Better take it before it falls.”

It’s his favorite mug, so he does. He wonders if she knew it was his favorite, or just thought he’d be easily bullied. He pulls a sip into his mouth: Chamomile, with just the right amount of milk and honey.

“Thank you,” he says. His breath billows into clouds, drifting upwards.

“Sure thing.”

To his surprise she doesn’t go back inside after that. Just stands there in his periphery, loudly slurping her own tea. When he risks a glance at her she’s looking up at the stars, which seem painfully bright at this altitude. The door slides open behind them, and she glances over her shoulder, to where Barry can’t see.

“The bread needs to prove, so I’m going to bed. Night, pipsqueak.” It’s Taako’s voice, which Barry had expected.

“Nighty.”

The sound of the door closing again. Lup turns back to Barry.

“Pumpernickel,” she says by way of explanation. “One of the villagers in the last place we stopped at gave us a local recipe. Should be ready by breakfast.”

Barry nods, a bit awkwardly. “Sounds good.” He’s not quite sure why she hadn’t gone back inside with Taako. Time has eased the mystery of Lup somewhat, but she still has the tendency to catch him off guard like this, when she is so direct he has no idea what she wants from him. Once, in their first couple cycles, Barry had awkwardly asked how she was always so sure in her actions. He’d idolized her a little bit then, how she was so confident. Always on.

Lup had given him a strange look and said, “If you aren’t certain of who you are, or what you want, someone will use that uncertainty to take it from you.” Later, he’d learned that she and Taako had grown up without anyone to take care of them. He thought he understood her a little better after that.

“Is, uh, there a story behind the nickname?” He asks, mostly to have something to say. He rolls the mug back and forth between his palms.

“Huh?”

“Pipsqueak. I’ve heard Taako call you that a couple times.”

“Oh,” Lup laughs, loud and open. “It’s just a thing from when we were kids. We had this aunt we lived with for a little while, and she called us Pitter and Patter. It sort of took off from there.”

Barry frowns, thinking. “So pipsqueak makes you… pitter, or patter?”

“Pitter, obvi. I thought you were smart, Barry.”

It surprises a laugh out of him, and he finally turns to fully look at her. It’s a bit of a shock to find her looking right back at him, smiling in a small, satisfied way. It makes his heart throb, to realize she sees him. Sees right through him.

“You know you can like, talk to us when you’re upset about stuff, right?” She says. “I get needing to be alone, but you don’t have to be if you don’t want to be.”

He has to look away. “Yeah, I... I know.”

“Cool.” She says it with an ease Barry envies. Then, after a beat, goes on. “You know, I think Taako likes you.”

Barry blinks. Glances nervously at her. “Yeah?”

“After I started making tea, he said, _do you think Barry wants some?_ It was sweet.” She drains her mug. “I like you a lot, too.”

His throat feels a little tight suddenly, and he swallows hard against the feeling. She’s always earnest when he least expects it; deft in all the ways he’s clumsy, and she makes it look so easy. “Thanks, I uh. I like you guys, too.”

She snorts. “Okay, dork. Let’s go inside, it’s cold as balls out here.”

He nods, letting himself follow her away from the edge. They’ve almost made it to the door when she freezes suddenly and grabs his free hand to get his attention.

“Shit, there was a falling star! Quick, wish for something cool.”

Barry’s too surprised to do anything but watch her as she jams her eyes closed and frowns in concentration. Her face, tilted upwards, is washed in moonlight, and he spends a long moment just looking. The notion of Lup as beautiful isn’t new to him. She’s lovely in a way that’s almost overwhelming, and he’s thought it a hundred times, a thousand times, over the last ten years: when he’s caught her smiling, or sweaty and snarling from a fight, or humming as she cooks. But even the most beautiful face will become commonplace after long enough, and it’s in this moment, looking at her, that Barry realizes the way he’s thought of her as beautiful has stopped having anything to do with her physical appearance.

The star he’s supposed to have wished on is long gone, but he focuses on the mingled heat of their hands together, as hot as a sun, and thinks, for the first time, _I wish.._.


	2. Tenderly

Barry and Lup are alone this cycle.

The most notable thing about this planet is the storm; visible from space and covering the atmosphere so entirely that they’d initially thought that it was one large, grey, churning sea. The 100 mph winds thrashed the Starblaster so intensely on its initial descent that Davenport had landed the ship with his hands white-knuckled on the controls and promptly made the executive decision that they would not be flying it again until the Hunger came. They had no leads on where the Light had landed, so, despite the fact that none of them really wanted to head out into the storm, a plan was hatched to break into groups of two and search from the ground. Barry would stay behind and run diagnostics to see if he could find the Light from the ship, and would contact them if he did.

But then Lup had caught a cold. Which meant that she _could_ have stayed behind in Barry’s stead, but then they ran the risk of it not actually being a cold, and Lup dying, and no one being there to fly the Starblaster away from the planet when the Hunger showed up. Lup had attempted to convince Davenport that she was fine, and could go out with the rest of them, but...Davenport had died from a slow and mysterious illness last cycle. It had appeared innocuous at first, just like the common cold. So he put his foot down. She would just be dead weight, he said. Things were different now, but he was still their Captain when he needed to be.

Lup had been very angry the first couple days after everyone else had left. Barry hadn’t quite known what to do about it, and spent most of his time in the lab, trying to figure out any way to cut down on the interference from the storm on the ships censors. On the third day, he’d come into the kitchen to find Lup singing loudly and cooking with a terrifying ferocity. She’d wheeled around and hit him with a brilliant smile, crowing, “If they’re gonna go have all the fun without us, then we’ll make sure they regret missing out on all the fun we have here!”

They’d eaten themselves sick that night; Lup was still in the habit of cooking for seven.

Ultimately, her cold was just that: a cold. Lup stops sniffling after the first week and moves on to figuring out the best way to stop them from going stir-crazy. The ship is weirdly quiet without the rest of their family to fill it, save for the constant wind, which sings a wild, neverending song as it buffets the side of the Starblaster. Lup comes up with several games to entertain them: the first is whoever can best harmonize with the wind wins, (Lup, easily), which turns into whoever can invent the coolest device using only household objects to stop them from _hearing_ the wind wins (Barry, using a pair of socks, shoelaces, and parts of their blender). The game they play most commonly is called _I Bet_. Barry doesn’t know if Lup realizes they are playing a game, even though she often is the one who starts it. She will say, “I bet Taako is pissed about being soaking wet,” and he will reply, “I bet Magnus won’t stop talking about all the things he could carve the trees into.” Then they will one-up each other, getting more and more ridiculous as they go. (“I bet Davenport has gone full-on _Gnome vs Wild_.” “I bet Merle is finally wearing something other than fucking flip-flops.”)

They fall into an easy routine. Barry is not the chattiest person, but he is happy to be in the same space as Lup as she talks at him about whatever is on her mind. She’ll sit with him as he works in the lab, or he’ll join her in the kitchen and watch as she cooks. (She’ll let him help when he asks, but there’s only so many times a person can bare to be scolded about the proper width one should slice an onion.) Privately, Barry is very glad that he was not left alone for the year, and even more glad to have Lup be the one who stayed. Twenty years back being alone with her for so long would have filled his body with a fluttering anxiety, but he has long since made friends with the feeling. Longing for her is his new baseline: he can’t remember who he was before it, or picture a future beyond it.  

In the evenings they hang out on the couch together. Sometimes playing cards, sometimes listening to music and working on their own separate tasks. Often she’ll lean up against his side and fall asleep there. Lup complains that the storm has left a persistent chill in the Starblaster, and says it’s easier to sleep with him warming her up. Barry feels the heat of her body against his and tries very hard not to let himself read into it.

Lup is laying on her back in his bed, legs propped up against the headboard, buried in blankets, when she declares, “I’m never going to be warm again.”

Barry is sitting at his desk and looks over his shoulder. She is staring at him.

“Why don’t you take a hot shower?” He offers. “I’ll make us some tea.” The Starblaster isn’t equipped with a bath, it would have taken up too much space, but they discovered early that if you crank up the heat enough and seal the bathroom door you can make yourself a sort of DIY sauna.

Lup sighs loudly, but extracts herself from her nest and rolls out of bed. When she’s playing petulant like this she looks more like Taako. Barry has a hunch that she only does it when he’s not around because she’s very aware of this fact.

When he hears the shower running Barry gets up and goes to the kitchen to start heating up water. If he’s timed it right, then the kettle should go off right around when Lup gets out. It looks bleak outside the kitchen window, as it has the whole year. He thinks about his friends, stuck outside in the deluge, and shivers. He turns back to his room.

Lup is in the shower long enough for Barry to get reinvested in his notes. He’s been hypothesizing about what kind of intelligent life may exist on this planet, based on what little he’s seen. He’s hoping to compare it to Lucretia’s notes when she gets back, to see if he’s correct. It’s more of a thought experiment than anything actually worthwhile, but they’ve been cooped up for months. It’s either thought experiments or mindless boredom.

He hears his door slide open behind him.

“The hot water should be ready soon,” he says.

“Cool.”

Maybe it’s something about the tone of her voice that makes him glance over his shoulder. An exaggerated ease that tips him off. He turns around and Lup is standing in his doorway, entirely naked.

Here’s the thing about living with the same group of people for decades: their bodies lose their sense of mystery. It’s not that Barry has seen everyone on the Starblaster nude, but between years of swimming, and sunbathing, and hastily patching up every variety of wound, he’s gotten a pretty good idea of what they all look like under their clothes. It’s different though, to have Lup standing there, not a stitch on her, staring him down.

There’s steam rolling off her body, which must be rapidly cooling in the chill air of the hallway. A drop of water drips off one of the coils of her hair and into her shoulder, sliding down her chest. He’s always known she was well-freckled, but he’s surprised to see the scattered collection of moles on her belly. That seems special. Barry swallows.

“I’m here to seduce you,” she says casually. “Hope that’s cool.”

“Yeah,” Barry says. It comes out more hoarse than he means it to.

Lup laughs in a way that shakes her whole body. “Then come over here, doofus.”

He stands, then awkwardly crosses toward her. It feels strange to be completely dressed while she is so very not. He reaches out to touch her, but then the tea kettle starts screaming, and he jumps back. They both stare at each other in shock for a second, and then Lup barks out a laugh.

“You should go get that.”

Barry nods and hurries past her towards the living room. Once there, he takes a few deep breaths and replays the last thirty seconds in his mind over and over, until he’s no longer sure they actually happened. Then he makes them both some tea.

When he comes back to his room Lup has put a sweater on and is sitting in his bed with her arms wrapped around her knees. He can’t decide if the swooping feeling in his gut is disappointment or relief, but she smiles at him when he hands her the mug.

“ _Maybe_ I should have eased into that one,” she says, tilting her face in a show of contemplation. If she’s embarrassed he can’t tell. “Sorry about that.”

Barry finds himself shaking his head. “No, it was... no.”

She takes a sip of her tea and looks at him curiously. “No?”

“In a good way.” His face feels warm. Maybe it’s the steam off his mug. She gives him a long wry look, like she can read his mind, and suddenly the casual ease he’s spent years building up around her spirals away from him. He’s about to jump out of his skin. He takes a too-long drink from his tea and burns his tongue, hopelessly trying to regain a sense of control over his body.

“Hm. Not so sure that one made sense, my man. I might have to consult my Rosetta stone. My _Barry For Dummy’s_ guide.”

“Lup,” he says. “I mean.” His whole body is running hot, now. He puts his mug on his bedside table. He knows they’re on the very edge of...something, and she’s asking him to take the final step towards her, but he’s pushed the words down for so long that now that they’re climbing up his throat he feels strangled by them. “Of course you don’t need to…the thought that you’d even need to do anything to, to somehow convince me. I…”

Lup’s smile is teasing, but intent. “You what, Barry?”

“I.” He buries his face in his hands. “I want to kiss you so fucking badly. And I have. For years. You already know. Everyone knows. So, please, stop...torturing me.”

It feels good to have said it, finally. _Finally_. But it comes with a strange sense of loss. He’s held onto this quiet, desperate feeling for so long; tried to push it down when it got stronger, tried to muffle it when it got louder. And now that he’s told her it doesn’t just belong to him anymore. It’s hers, too.

He doesn’t see Lup put her mug down, but he hears her laugh softly, and he feels her hands on his as she pulls them away from his face. When he looks up she is inches from him, and all he can see is the sharp point of her nose, the hazel of her eyes, and the small, dark freckles on her bottom lip, which he’s tried to avoid staring at for years.

“You are the softest man,” she says definitively.

“I—”

She’s already kissing him. Barry can’t stop the helpless noise that escapes him as she wraps her arms around his neck and settles the weight of her body against his, pressing him up against the headboard. He slips his arms around her waist, cupping the curve of her shoulder blade. She’s still damp from the shower. Her skin sticks to his.

The time it takes them to break for air is long enough for Barry to work himself into a tizzy.

“You know, Lup,” he says quickly. “You don’t have to—I don’t want you to feel obligated because I said something, or if it’s just because I’m here, or—”

She leans back and puts a hand up. It stops him mid-sentence.

“We can go as fast or slow as you want to,” she says evenly. “But I want you to know I made my mind up a long time ago. And it has nothing to do with this fucked up situation we’re in, and it’s not because I feel obligated.” She laughs, loudly. “The fact that you think I would do anything out of obligation is…very funny. I want _you_. The whole Barry Bluejeans package. Is that chill with you?”

“Oh,” Barry says. “Yeah. Uh, yes.”

“Hella.” She gives him a long, measured look. “Now how do you feel about some ol’ fashioned, high-school style necking and we talk about all the serious stuff later.”

Barry exhales. “That’s sounds pretty damn good to me, actually.”

Her breath ghosts across his mouth as she leans in. “Then we’re on the same page, Barold.”

Their family returns the next month, with the Light in tow. They are all water-logged and exhausted, so much so that none of them think to wonder about the way Lup and Barry keep smiling at each other. When Taako finally asks Lup what she’d spent her time doing, she shrugs delicately, and says, “Oh you know. Just kept warm.”


	3. Soothingly

This world is unkind. Barry finds himself thinking this. He knows it is unhelpful and unscientific to think of some worlds as morally better than others, but their time here has been exhausting, and after ten months they still haven't found the Light of Creation. They keep getting sidetracked, which Barry knows is driving Davenport to nervous fits. Their current lead on the Light has brought them to a war-torn village, plagued by a mysterious illness that only seems to affect children who haven’t yet hit puberty. Magnus had come back to the ship with tears in his eyes after visiting one of the leper camps. He’d pulled Barry into his room and said, “Please, I know Davenport has you working on something else, but. Please. We have to do something.” Barry had thought it then too, as he held Magnus’s anxious, trembling, hands: _this world is unkind._

Epidemiology is in no way Barry’s forte, but years of space travel have turned him into something of a jack of all trades. Sometimes he catches himself remembering with a touch of irony how badly he’d longed for more time to study while he was still in school. Well, he has it now.  

He managed to get a sample of the disease a couple days ago, and has been testing it in the lab ever sense. It’s made him somewhat scarce topside, but he’s spent plenty of cycles deeply invested in his work, so he doesn’t think much of it. Whenever Magnus sees him he carefully asks how it’s going so far, trying so hard to restrain himself and respect the process, but so clearly impatient for results. Barry has answered him honestly every time: there’s nothing yet, but he’s still trying.

Barry doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he knows he must have when he feels a hand on his back and becomes uncomfortably conscious of the fact that his head is on his desk, and that there’s a puddle of drool staining the pages of his notebook.

“Hey humanmen,” Lup’s voice is saying. “The world is calling, it wants it’s Barry back.”

She slips a hand into his hair and scruffs it as he stirs. He tries to raise his head to look at her, but the lab’s fluorescent lights make him suddenly aware of his pounding headache. He puts his head back down.

“What time is it?”

“Night. As in, dead of. Lucretia tried to come collect you for dinner but you never came up.” Her hand is still on his head, and she rubs her fingers along his scalp, squeezing and contracting. “You’ve been here almost twenty hours, babe.”

That can’t be right. Barry thinks back: he doesn’t remember talking to Lucretia, though he’s sure Lup is telling the truth. He’d run down to the lab after having an epiphany over his morning coffee, which means the last meal he’d eaten had been dinner the night before.

“Huh,” Barry says weakly. “I used to pull all-nighters all the time at the Institute.”

Lup tugs on his hair, partly teasing, mostly a reprimand. “Too bad you’re an old man now. Go to bed.”

He wants to, but moving seems like an awful lot of effort. “If I go, will you keep rubbing my head?” He tries to play it off as a joke, but he’s too tired and the inflection is all wrong. It comes out like a plea.

Lup laughs. A quiet thing, under her breath. “You got it.”

With a monumental expenditure of effort, he sits up. His head swims for a second, neck aching. His vision is blurry, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s because his glasses had slipped off his face as he slept. Lup grabs them off the desk and hands them over. When he puts them on she’s frowning at him, looking unimpressed.

“I love you,” she says. “But you’re a mess.”

Now that he can look at her clearly he can see she’s in her pyjamas; a huge sweatshirt her and Taako seem to be perpetually stealing from one another and pair of loose fitting shorts. Her hair is squashed to one side, like she was just sleeping on it. She must have gotten out of bed to come find him. “I know. I’m sorry you had to come get me.”

“I didn’t _have to_ , I did it out of the kindness of my heart.”

Barry’s not sure if he quite understands the difference, but he lets her pull him to his feet.

“You don’t have anything still running in here that’s gonna explode if we leave it do you?”

He follows her gaze as it sweeps across the lab. The newest version of the cure is still synthesizing, but it should be fine if he leaves it overnight. He shakes his head and flips off the light.

The rest of the ship is dark and quiet. They pass through the living room on the way to his quarters, and by the color of the sky out the window he would guess it’s close to sunrise. The sky is red on this world, but right now it’s pale pink at the edges of the horizon. It makes Lup look otherworldly, like she’s cast in rose quartz; a glowing specter guiding him through the night.

Barry giggles a bit hysterically, and she glances back at him, mouth quirking. He must be really exhausted if he’s waxing poetic.

“You good back there?”

“Uh-huh.”

He crawls into bed as soon as they get to his room, and Lup makes a noise of distress.

“I can’t believe I’m in love with a man who sleeps in his _jeans_.”

“Barry Sleepjeans,” Barry says, because Taako’s not here to say it. Lup snorts, and he turns on his back to look up at her. The only light in his room is coming through a small porthole window, so he can only just make out her silhouette above him. “You don’t actually have to stay. You should go to sleep.”

“I am going to sleep. Now move over and let me at that sweet head.”

Barry rolls so he’s facing the wall. Their beds weren’t really made for more than one person, (probably intentionally, so members of the mission wouldn’t sleep together, _oops_ ), but they’ve grown use to squeezing. Lup settles in behind him and slips an arm under his head. Her warmth on his back is immediately comforting, and he relaxes a little more as she places a hand on the base of his neck and starts to knead.

“I used to do this for Taako when we were younger,” she murmurs after a while. “Whenever we’d had a really bad day and he couldn’t sleep.”

Barry hums to let her know he’s awake and listening.

She presses her thumb deep into a knot in his back. “He’d do it for me too sometimes, but he was always fussy when we were kids.” She laughs. “More than he is now, if you can believe it. Like, this situation sucks ass, obvi, but…he’s really mellowed out. I think being around people like this is good for him...us.”

Barry can tell she isn’t really expecting a response from him, so he just nods, sighing a little as she goes back to running her hand through his hair. She’s silent again, for so long that Barry almost falls asleep. Then her voice is in his ear; quiet but precise, like she’s been formulating what she means to say.

“Where do you go, when you get like that?”

This rouses him. “What do you mean?”

“When you disappear into the lab all day. Like...honey, I’m all about your big beautiful brain and everything, but you gotta get up and walk around. Or like, eat something? I don’t wanna just go in and haul your ass out of there—you’re an adult. But also...I don’t know how to…I don’t want to say _help you_ , because that’s not right, but. How do you want me to support you? If you even want...that.”  

Barry doesn’t reply right away, turning what she’s said around in his head. He knows his silence can be frustrating for her; she feels loudly, openly. Barry’s an introvert who’s lived a mostly internal life, but he knows he needs people. Hell, it took him years of living alone to realize it wasn’t healthy to just eat one meal a day, or that no longer feeling the need to sleep wasn’t just indicative of him being a hard worker. He may not be physically affectionate like Magnus, or rambunctious like Lup, who glows louder and brighter the more people there are in a room, but other people ground him. They stop him from floating away in a haze of theory, or burying so deep in himself he forgets he’s a human being and not just a tangle of thoughts snared around an idea.

“Babe?” Lup squeezes his shoulder, voice a little nervous. “I kinda just bared my soul. Any thoughts?”

Barry nods. When he speaks, it’s slowly, partly because he’s half asleep, partly making sure it’s what he means to say. “When I…get like that, it’s not really something I think about. I don’t think, _I’m hungry, but I’ll work through it_. It’s more like, I kind of...fall into myself. I get so invested in finding a solution for a problem that my body becomes just another tool I’m using.” He thinks about turning over to look at her but it’s like he’s been transmuted into stone, he feels so heavy. He just presses his head deeper into the pillow. “So what you can do is…just…this. Remind me that I’m a person, if that doesn’t sound weird.”

Lup shifts so her chin is tucked over his head. Her hand has slowed to the point that she’s just petting his hair. Barry is so tired that his thoughts have started to drift into incoherency. He feels like he’s sinking into a pool of warm molasses.  

“Not weird at all.” Lup says softly, but he’s already asleep.


	4. Reverently

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: This chapter is heavier in tone than the previous, and does feature character death. While we all know this character death is temporary, the revival of said characters do not happen on screen. Also, a lot of this chapter features characters trapped in a small, dark place. If you're very claustrophobic, maybe give it a pass. Mostly, be kind to yourself while reading, and take a break if you need to.

There’s some cycles when none of them die. And then there are ones like this:

Magnus had run out of the Starblaster immediately upon landing, despite Davenport’s shout of dismay. He’d seen what they’d all thought was a planet covered in a thick blanket of snow and had taken a running jump from the bay doors before they’d even dropped the ladder, yelling, “CANNON-BALL.”

Barry isn’t looking when Magnus jumps, but he hears the noise he makes when he hits the ground—a muted thump, and then a wheeze. Lup and Taako had been closest to the door when Magnus had sprinted through it, so are the first to move to the doorframe and survey the damage. Lup laughs, sharp and loud, at whatever she sees, so Barry assumes Magnus is at the very least alive, and comes up behind them.

When he peeks over the twin’s shoulders he can see Magnus laying on the ground, splayed on his stomach. What they’d thought was snow hadn’t broken his fall at all, and with a groan Magnus rolls over onto his back and shouts, slightly breathless, “So it turns out it’s sand!”

Lup unfolds the front door ladder and gracefully descends it. “I give it an eight for style, two for execution.”

“And a ten for idiocy,” Taako agrees, sliding down after her.

Barry leans out from the doorway, squinting at the horizon. All there is to see for miles are rolling dunes of blinding white, illuminated by this planet’s twin suns, which are beaming just overhead. The sky above is a thin, pale blue, and the climate is surprisingly mild and dry. Maybe he’ll try and make some sort of UV protection for their eyes this year. Below him, Lup whistles.

“Barr, come down and feel this sand! It’s…squishy? It holds its shape like it’s wet, but it’s super not.” She’s taken a knee, using her hands to form a clump of it into a ball, and Taako takes the opportunity to shove her down face-first.

“Yeah, _Barr_ ,” he crows. “Come feel, it’s squishy like your hot bod.”

Lup grabs him by the ankle and yanks him down. Taako yelps, and then they’re both rolling around in the sand while Magnus looks on longingly, like he wants to get in on the action.

Barry climbs down and, on impulse, inspects the Starblaster’s landing gear. Something has gone weird with the front wheel; There’s a place where it’s sunk in deeper than anywhere else, and is still slowly sinking, like the ground has caved in underneath. It sets the ship at a strange angle, and Barry crouches down to get a better look.

Something catches his eye. At first he thinks it’s just a shadow—a side effect of his eyes having trouble adjusting to the light. Then it coalesces, and just where Barry had been looking a shape emerges from the sand: a small, pink hand, reaching upwards.

Barry startles loudly and loses his balance, tipping backwards onto his butt.

Magnus, from behind him, says, “What’s—?” and then stops. He stops, Barry can only imagine, because he must be seeing the same thing Barry is.

All around them, in a forty foot radius, creatures are pulling themselves out of the sand. They’re vaguely humanoid, closest in size and shape to dwarves, and covered entirely in a layer of thick, black fur, save for their hands, which are hairless and six fingered. Their nails are long, not like an animal’s claws, but thick and blunt, almost human. It could just be the fur covering their faces, but Barry wagers a guess that they don’t have eyes; the only discernible facial features are their prominent pink noses.

He is, understandably, quite alarmed, but they’ve developed rules for first contact, and screaming in horror isn’t a good look in any situation. He clears his throat, and says, “Hello, we’re, uh, so sorry if our landing disturbed you.”

Behind him, Taako makes a high, startled sound, and Barry glances back. He and Lup are still halfway on the ground; him on his hands and knees, her on her back, sitting up at the waist. One of the creatures has placed a hand on Taako’s ankle, and he looks like he’s summoning every bit of his willpower to resist spin-kicking it over the next dune. Lup and Magnus are staring at it, horrified, and Barry waves his hands to get their attention.

 _GO BACK TO THE SHIP,_ he mouths, gesturing violently to the Starblaster.

Lup and Magnus frown at him in tandem. It would be endearing in any other situation.

Magnus points at him.  _YOU?_

Barry shakes his head. He’ll try and get to the ladder if he can, but he really needs to get the others to safety while he has the creatures distracted. Neither of them look happy with this, but Taako, who’d been watching the exchange, yelps, “You don’t need to tell me twice!” And makes a break for it.

Which is, of course, when it all goes to shit.

At the first sign of movement, the creatures react. Barry feels a set of nails dig into his back and yelps, trying to shake his attacker off. As soon as he’s removed one, another is on him, then another. They’re heavy for being so small, and it only takes four to get him on his stomach, furiously scrabbling at his clothes, drawing blood when they find skin. He takes a second to silently curse himself for leaving the ship without his wand, then he throws an elbow, and one of them falls away with a screech. It gives him just enough space to see Lucretia standing above him, in the doorway of the Starblaster. She raises her wand and blasts one of them away from Taako, who is still scrambling to the ladder.

“Tell Davenport to fly!” Barry shouts.

Lucretia looks down at him, eyes wide. Barry knows he’s not the best fighter, like Magnus, or healer, like Merle, but he is relatively confident in one thing: his ability to do quick math.

There are at least a forty of these creatures swarming them. Magnus doesn’t have any weapons, and Barry doesn’t have his wand. By the infuriated way she is screaming spells, he’d guess Lup has hers, but that’s one magic user against a hoard. The odds are not in their favor.

“Go!”

Lucretia looks stricken, but she nods and shouts something over her shoulder that’s lost to the sound of the alien’s angry chittering. There’s a pause, then the bond engine kicks on, impossibly loud this close to Barry’s head. Lucretia keeps firing spells as the ship begins to rumble and rise, and Barry feels a sweep of relief when he sees Taako finally grab ahold of the ladder just as the Starblaster pulls away.

They’ve gotten about thirty feet in the air when Taako seems to realize that he’s left his sister behind. He turns, and even from far away Barry can easily make out the look of horror on his face. The Starblaster is gaining altitude quickly. Taako leans away from the ladder. Lucretia tries to pull him inside.

Maybe he slips. Barry has to believe it’s an accident, and not regret at leaving his twin behind, that makes it happen, but one second Taako is gripping the ladder and the next he is falling through the air, arms pinwheeling helplessly.

Barry hears Lup scream, sees Lucretia clap her hands to her face, then something knocks him hard in the back of the head, and his body floats away from him.

 

He opens his eyes to darkness, and a sweeping, churning nausea. On impulse he tries to sit up, struggling violently against whatever is restraining him, but Lup’s familiar voice stills him quickly.

“Babe! Babe it’s just me.”

He feels her hands squeeze his shoulders, which helps him realize she’d been holding him in her lap. Barry blinks quickly, and when it doesn’t clear his vision, swallows a wave of panic.

“I. I can’t see,” he croaks.

A voice pipes up near his feet. “It’s not just you, it’s dark as shit in here.”

Barry jolts, and Lup holds him down again. “Magnus is here, too. Try not to move so much, that lump on your head is fucking huge.”

Of course. Barry lays very still as another wave of nausea washes over him, spinning out into the dark. He tries to remember what happened: the creatures, the attack, then nothing. When he can speak again he says, “What about Taako?”

Lup is silent for a moment, long enough that he regrets asking. Then she says, “No. I don’t know if he survived that fall but they. They didn’t take him.”

He reaches up blindly, trying to reach her face. She huffs a tiny laugh and presses her cheek to his palm. Then says, voice pitched slightly too loud, “It’s fine, it’s good. He’d fucking hate this world.”

“Where are we, anyway? Can you see in here?”

“Like shit,” she says. “But sort of.”

Magnus speaks again. “We’re underground. They dragged us down here after the ship got away. I think this whole planet is like…tunnels? Like, uh, what rabbits live in? At least this part of it.”

Barry hums, thinking. “The Starblaster must have crushed part of their warren. I thought I saw the ground caving in by the landing gear. Do you still have your wand, Lup?”

“They took it, those assholes. But I...I think I could navigate us out without it.” She sounds less confident than Barry would like.

They eventually explain enough for Barry to get a sense of their situation. The room they are in is a small den, made from the same sand they’d seen on the surface, but with something added to keep it hard and tightly packed. There don’t seem to be any exits, but their captors have come by once and scraped out a small hole to chitter at them through, so it’s a safe bet that this is a room connected to a larger network. Both Lup and Magnus are scratched to hell, but neither are too badly hurt. They hadn’t seen Barry get knocked out, but he’d been unconscious for, by their approximation, a couple hours. Also, Magnus has started calling their captors 'morves'.

“You know! Like mole-dwarves.”

Barry snorts. “Not dwoles?”

“No that sounds totally stupid.”

“Yeah, sorry babe, I’m gonna have to go with morves on this one.”

The longer they sit, the colder the den gets, which is the only sign time is passing. Barry thinks it’s probably colder on the surface of the planet, and that whatever the morves used to harden the sand also acts as insulation, but their thick fur tells him it still must get quite cold in their burrows. When Lup starts shivering they all shuffle around so they’re pressed up on either side of Magnus, who lays his huge, warm arms over their shoulders. They talk idly about plans of escape, but it’s too easy to drift off in the complete darkness, and multiple times Barry finds himself jolting awake to the sound of Magnus’s voice, not remembering having fallen asleep, and having no idea how much time has passed.

“You still with us, buddy?”

Barry swallows around the grit in his throat. “Yeah, I’m here.”

He must nod off again though, because the next thing he’s aware of is falling on his side when Magnus suddenly moves away.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey,” Magnus is saying quickly. The morve's chittering is incredibly loud and close, and Barry feels one of them wrap a hand around his ankle. He kicks blindly, and when the hand falls away he tries to press himself back against the wall.

“Uh, guys?” Magnus’s voice is high with panic. “Lup, can you tell me what’s going on?”

The den is too small to stand in, but Barry is vaguely aware of Lup crawling towards the commotion, “They’re fucking taking you.” There’s a thump, and an animalistic shriek as she no doubt throws a punch. “Leave him alone you big ass rats!”

There’s another screech. Lup makes a small, surprised, noise and then something heavy lands next to Barry. He reaches out towards it, panicked, and comes in contact with skin.

“Lup?” He runs his hands over her face, anxiety growing when she doesn’t react.

Magnus’ voice is getting farther away. “Fuck, fine! I’ll go with you! Just leave them alone!”

Barry scrambles after him, but is struck by the fear that if he moves too far away from Lup he’ll never find his way back. He grabs what he thinks must be her foot and reaches out in front of him. There’s a strange scrabbling sound, and sand falls across his hand; they must be rebuilding whatever hole they dragged Magnus through. If Lup were awake, they could take this opportunity to run, but she isn’t.

Magnus’ next shout comes from a distressing distance. “Don’t worry, Barry! Take care of Lup!”

Crushed by a sudden, overwhelming anger that feels too big for this small, dark, room, Barry retreats to where Lup is still laying motionless. When he finds his way to her wrist he feels for a pulse. It’s weak and thready, but it’s there. His throat closes up around a shout of frustration, and he presses her palm to his mouth.

After a time, he calms himself and gets to work. There isn’t a bump on her head, which is puzzling, and when he delicately traces his hands over the other parts of her body nothing seems to be broken. It’s not until he passes over her ribs a third time that he finds it: a foreign object stuck in her side, as sharp and thin as a needle. It takes a bit of force to remove it, and when he rolls it around in his hands he finds it to be about six inches long, which makes him think it protruded through her clothes, into her skin.

He runs his fingers down the length of it and then sniffs: it’s hard to pick out, but he thinks he smells something sharp and tangy. Some sort of poison blow dart maybe? He carefully tucks into his shirt pocket in case it comes in handy later. Hopefully whatever it is is temporary, and just made to stun.

Out of useful things to do, he lifts Lup’s head into his lap and waits, trying to quell the helplessness rising in him and thinking of Magnus, who must be terrified. It’s one thing to be stuck in the dark with someone who can see, and an entirely different thing to be stuck in the dark alone, being interrogated or tortured or gods know what.

Eventually, after Barry has explored all avenues of mental distraction, Lup stirs.

“Barry?” She croaks.

He runs a soothing hand over her hair. “I’m here.”

She’s silent for a moment, presumably getting her bearings. Then she says weakly, “If I say, _oh, I just had the craziest dream about mole people_ , are you gonna say something lame like, _that wasn’t a dream_?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Dunk.” With a loud sigh, she sits up, though Barry keeps a hand on her back to steady her. “Do you know what happened to me? I feel like twice-baked ass.”

“They got you with some sort of sedative. Are you okay?”

She groans, and his hand slides off her back as she turns around to face him. “Besides the ass? I guess. Did they take Maggie?”

“Yeah.” He searches for her hand in the dark, anxious at the lack of contact. When he finds it, it’s cold and clammy, which is alarming. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Not really, but there’s not much to do about it now, babe.” She squeezes his fingers. “Methinks we need to get the fuck out of here. Before they come back.”

“What about Magnus?”

She sucks in a long breath. When she speaks again he can tell she’s frustrated that the words are even coming out of her mouth. “I...I don’t think I can find him, if you don’t know where they took him. They kinda dragged us down here kicking and screaming, but even if I’d been focusing on mapping out the way, there’s a million different tunnels. We’d never find him before they caught us.”

Barry nods, and with a certainty he’s not sure he actually feels, says, “We’ll come back for him. Once we regroup with the others we can come back.”

“Yeah, no fucking doubt. Any bright ideas on how to get us out?”

He does have one, actually. Something he’d been mulling over while she was unconscious.

“Well...it seems like the morves are blind, which means they’re navigating their warren by smell, and also, I’m thinking, by sound. So, hypothetically, if we make enough noise, it might disorient them enough that they won’t be able to follow us.” Barry pauses to let Lup interject, but she’s quiet for long enough that he goes on. “I—I know it seems counter-intuitive, and maybe a little silly. It’s not stealthy, but in a way we’d be hiding in plain sight. ”

“No,” Lup says, “It’s a good idea. So...all I gotta do is guide us out, huh?”

“If you’re up to it,” Barry says quickly. “I could always figure something else out.”

He doesn’t really have anything else, and Lup probably knows that. Maybe that’s why she sounds so cavalier when she says, “Don’t be stupid, babe. I got this. You just use that pretty mouth of yours, and I’ll get us out of here in no time.”

“Sure,” Barry says, and hopes he sounds just as unfazed.

 

He’s not sure how long they wait. Maybe it’s twenty minutes. Maybe it’s four hours. He tries keeping track by counting out the seconds, but loses count every time he thinks someone may be approaching. Lup gets progressively more twitchy; keeps singing the same notes over and over under her breath and restlessly refolding her legs. However long it takes, their captors do come back eventually, heralded by the sound of their long nails scratching in the sand.

Lup grabs his hand and squeezes hard—too hard. There’s the sound of movement just beyond him, of sand being pushed out of the way. Barry shouts. Then he takes another breath and keeps shouting. He’s not someone who raises his voice often, and it hurts, in a way he doesn’t really expect, but it must work, because Lup yanks him towards her, barreling over the morve who’d opened up the hole, which shrieks but doesn’t strike back. Barry feels a wave of relief, and then they are both scrabbling forward on their hands and knees, trying not to lose contact, her hand so tight around his it aches.

After this, time seems to spool out in front of Barry, spiraling off, flattening out, senseless. He crawls until his back is throbbing, and then he crawls farther. Occasionally there is the impression of fur and heat, of hands trying to pry him and Lup apart, and all Barry can do is shout louder. His throat is burning. They keep going. Down and around, up, through sharp turns, low overhangs, dead ends. His voice floats away from him, until it’s a noise somebody else is making. He becomes formless; defined only by the knot of their hands, and the pain of his body, and the sound that must be coming from him, so ceaseless and terrified, transformed into something genuine without his permission. Finally, when it seems they’ve been going up an incline for some time, Lup stops. Barry does too, shuddering quiet.

“Fuck this,” Lup is saying. Barry has no idea how long she’s been saying it. Her voice is tight and thin, like she’s been crying. “Fuck this. Fuck this.”

There’s the sound of desperate scrabbling, and then a muted thud. Then again. The sound of impact, over and over.

“Lup,” Barry rasps. “What—?”

There is light, like a sword through an eye. Pure, golden light, so sharp and sudden that Barry flinches away from it. Lup has punched through the top of the den. The shaft of sunlight illuminates her face, and for a second it’s the only thing Barry can see—grimy with dirt and dried blood, wet with tears. Then he sees the shapes of the morves in the tunnel just beyond them, and he realizes he’s stopped yelling. He tries to raise his voice, but it cracks and fails.

“Go,” he hisses. “Climb.”

Lup is still desperately scraping sand out of the way, trying to make the hole she’s made bigger. Barry grabs her by the waist and heaves her inelegantly upwards, pushing her head and shoulders through the gap. She cries out in surprise, but quickly gets the idea, wriggling her torso through the top and loosening sand as she goes.

Barry turns around to face the morve that’s rushing at him. He darts forward, matching it’s momentum and using his whole body to throw a punch. It goes down, and something in his hand pops painfully, but that doesn’t stop him from rounding on the second one, which is coming from the opposite end of the tunnel. He feels like a feral animal, like he’d tear the thing apart if it tried to take him back into the dark.

Lup is working her hips through now, kicking violently. Barry suddenly remembers the weapon he’d squirreled away in his pocket and yanks it out, driving it into the second morve’s face, where the eyes would be. It crumples instantaneously, the same way Lup had earlier. It makes Barry feel sick.

“Come on,” Lup is shouting at him. She’s worked her way through the hole, and is reaching down to pull him out. “Barry!”

He turns—makes himself turn and take her hands. Hefting himself up and out, into the world above.

“There’s more coming,” he rasps.

Lup pulls him to his feet, and then they’re both running, loose-limbed, inelegant, down the length of a sand dune. One of the suns has set, with the remaining one skirting along the horizon, painting the landscape two-toned, orange and lavender, deep in shadow but rich with color. It’s the most beautiful goddamn thing Barry has ever seen.

Eventually, once it seems like their captors have given up chasing them, they slow to a shambling walk.  

“Can we uh, take a rest?” Lup says.

Barry doesn’t stop. “We should keep going till nightfall.” His head is still swimming, throbbing, but the thought of being ambushed now makes his skin crawl.

“Barry,” she says pleadingly, and it strikes him cold. She’s never said his name like that before. “Please.”

“Sorry, yes, of course.” He turns around and hurries back to where she’s standing a few paces behind. She moves to sit, but wobbles worryingly, and he quickly helps ease her to the ground. She chuckles a little at his gallantry, but it’s strained and breathless. For the first time he sees how pale she’s gone under the sand and dirt that cakes them both. “You should have said something. Did they—are you in pain?”

Her inhale is labored. Wet and rattling in a way that zings anxiety up Barry’s spine. “Not quite that. But uh, I think that sedative they hit me with might be reacting adversely with my superior elf biology.”

Barry shakes his head, frustrated at their luck. Of course. Of course this, now. “I’m sure I can synthesize a cure back on the ship.”

“Deffo.” She flops onto her back and closes her eyes, frowning hazily. “Give our friends a ring, won’t you, lover?”

It takes him a second to understand what she’s asking for, but then he’s hurrying away from her, using his feet to shuffle a message into the sand as big as he can get it: _SOS_. Hopefully Davenport hasn’t given up on searching the area for signs of them yet. He comforts himself with the thought that, with the light not having fallen, recovering crew members would still be a top priority, especially with only three left aboard.

Lup is breathing shallowly when he returns to her. When he kneels down to check her pulse she blinks sedately up at him. “Should we keep going?”

“No.” He sits down beside her, taking her hand in his. “If you’re poisoned we need to keep your heartbeat slow. And we should keep close to the _SOS_ I just wrote. I—,” he grits his teeth. “I shouldn’t have made you run before—I _knew_ you were drugged, but I—”

She squeezes his hand. “Shut up, honey. Lay down with me.”

He wavers for a moment, then obliges, tucking his arm under her head and pulling her close to him. The sand underneath them has already begun to lose its heat, and Barry knows immediately than any sleep they get tonight will be cold and miserable.

“I was kind of wigging out back there,” She says quietly, eyes closed. “Hearing you screaming like that—and then, it felt like we’d never—I felt like I was losing my mind.”

Barry nods. His throat is aching in a way that radiates down into his chest. Even breathing hurts. “Me too,” He admits. “But we’re out now. We made it, so don’t...”

He can’t stomach finishing the sentence. Lup opens her eyes and smiles at him, the corners of her mouth just barely lifting. “It’s okay.”

After that, they’re both silent for a long time. Lup seems to drift in and out of sleep, occasionally shuddering quietly. Barry keeps his head tilted skyward and watches the colors shift, keeping his eyes peeled for their ship. For a long time it is an unchanging, lavender twilight, and then finally the second sun slips beyond the horizon, and it is dark. Barry closes his eyes.

As he predicted, as soon as the sun sets it grows colder quickly. Lup shivers violently for awhile, and then her body seems to give up on it. Barry folds himself around and her curses the whole damn planet, but mostly himself, for anything and everything he can think of. Maybe they should have stayed trapped. Maybe the morves would have the cure for whatever they gave Lup. Maybe he could have thought of a better way to escape, a way to communicate with them, a way to get Magnus out. Maybe…

He sleeps too, in brief starts and bursts. Waking often, to check if Lup is still breathing. When it gets so cold he loses feeling in the tips of his fingers and toes he watches the sky. It’s dark, dark blue, and seems to reach down toward him and pull him up in turn, somehow both concave and convex. He feels like he’s spiraling away from his body. He’s concussed, probably. There are so many stars.

The next time he wakes up it is morning, and Lup is cold and still in his arms. Her eyes are closed. Her breathing has stopped. Barry rolls away and throws up in the sand.

He tries to bury her, but every handful of sand over her body feels like another weight in his stomach, and he ends up staggering away, far to the other side of his scrawled  _SOS_ , where he collapses to his knees. His crying is silent. His voice is gone.

He thinks, _I would die a thousand times before I let this ever happen again._

He thinks, _I would give away my death._

The twin suns of this planet burn bright above him, blinding him to the dark curve of Lup’s body, locked in an endless cycle, always reaching towards or pulling away. Barry sits with them for a while.

Moving through the sky, just off the horizon, there is a familiar silver dot.


	5. Obsessively

At first Barry thinks it’s just Lup’s excitement over having her body back. She’s always been a tactile person: ready to tussle with Magnus, or playfully scrap with Taako, or drape herself over Barry while he’s working. So it’s more _overwhelming_ than it is strange to Barry the way she uses any excuse to get her hands on him during the first month she has a body again. During the day she winds her hands in his, (whether he’s currently using them or not; most notable was the time she knocked a book out of his hands to make way for hers), or presses her cheek to the top of his head and folds her arms around his neck. At night, in their bed, she’ll nuzzle her face in his stomach, laughing when she finds a particularly sensitive spot and he tries to wriggle away. When he protests too loudly she looks at him all wide-eyed and says, “Babe, you’re just so _soft_ , you really wanna take this from me?” And of course he’s missed her, desperately, achingly, so the answer is always, no. Not really.

But then he starts to notice her doing it with other things. The first time, he walks into their living room to find her holding a blanket to her face. It sends a bolt of alarm through him, and for a moment he’s sure that she’s crying and was muffle to hide the sound. But then she moves the blanket and turns to look at him, and she seems completely fine—is even laughing a little, at being caught.

“What are you doing, hon?”

She smiles brightly, “I was just thinking how nice this blanket is! Where did we get it?”

He’s a little caught off guard, but he smiles back, “Uh, Merle knit it for us, I think.”

“Mmmm,” Lup puts it back on the couch and rubs her hands over it a couple times, almost absently. She’d never expressed any particular fondness for Merle’s knitting before, had teased him for all the lumpy hats he’d made in the cycles he’d spent getting any good, actually, but maybe nostalgia has softened her to the idea.

Barry tilts his head. “Should we ask him to knit one for our bed?”

“That might be nice,” she says, but doesn’t seem particularly invested or excited by the idea. So maybe that’s not it. Barry frowns, and Lup pats him absentmindedly as she passes by, making her way to the kitchen.

The next time is a little less obvious, but Barry still catches it. They’ve had a pair of stray cats show up meowing at their front door around meal time a couple nights in a row, and Barry can’t figure out why until he wakes up early one morning and finds Lup sitting on their porch, feeding them. He stands in the doorway for a moment, nonplussed, watching Lup try and coax one into her lap with a scrap of chicken. Then he clears his throat.

“Making new friends?”

Lup startles, a testament to how focused she was, and then grins up at him. It would be a guilty look on anyone else, but Lup doesn’t really do guilty.

“They’re cute, right? I want to name them Angus and Dangus, I think it’ll make him cry.”

Barry laughs. They are cute: one a sturdy looking tabby and the other a svelte little tortie. As he watches, the tabby snatches the chicken from Lup and cautiously allows her to stroke him. Lup makes a small, delighted sound.

“I can see the resemblance. Are we adopting, then?”

The tortie is less trusting than her brother, and stays a couple paces away, watching them, very still. Lup tosses her a piece of chicken and says, “You like cats.”

Barry smiles wryly, and slowly lowers himself next to her, mindful of not scaring away Angus (or maybe Dangus). “I _do_ like cats. Do _you_ like cats?” As long as he’s known her she’s never mentioned any interest in them, or pets in general.

Lup hums noncommittally, but Barry catches the careful, intense way she runs her hand along the cat’s back, over and over again. “These are very good cats, Barry.”

Barry leans over and pinches off another piece of chicken from the breast Lup has in her other hand, (leftovers from last night’s dinner, he notes), and tosses it to the tortie. She creeps her way forward. Barry lets his eyes drift over to Lup’s face, and says casually, “Is he soft?”

Lup is beaming at the cat under her hand the way she does when she’s delighted enough to forget someone is watching her; her eyes all crinkled, smile huge. “Yeah,” she says enthusiastically.

So that’s it, then. He drops a kiss on her shoulder and carefully stands. “Let me go inside and call Magnus, see if he knows anything about feeding cats. I don’t think salt and pepper chicken is actually, uh, good for them.”

Lup only has eyes for the tabby, who has started purring loudly as she strokes under his chin. “‘Kay.”

It’s sweet, he thinks, as he walks back into the house, and it explains why she’s been so physically affectionate lately. It makes sense that sensation would take on a new significance for her after years of feeling nothing. Of living in darkness. Barry’s throat closes up suddenly at the thought, but he shakes it off and goes to search for his stone of farspeech.

The thing is, it’s hard to ignore the realization once he’s made it. She’s so vibrant in everything she does, and watching her rediscover all she’s lost makes him happy, but it’s bittersweet. Sometimes it steals the air from his chest. When he wakes up in the middle of the night to feel her stroking a hand along his back, he finds himself swallowing down a thick wave of sorrow. She must feel him stir, and murmurs a soft apology for waking him up. All he can do is turn and press his face into her shoulder, unable to speak. The feeling is crushing, in the dark.

Then one day he wakes up and finds himself alone in the bed. It’s embarrassing to admit, but it still sets his heart racing, even after months of knowing she’s alive and safe. He tries to fall back asleep but after half an hour he gives up and goes to search for her.

He finds her in the living room, and the sight of her glues him to the doorframe. She’s laying on her back, on the floor, illuminated by a beam of sunlight falling high through the window. It highlights her freckled face, plays off her dark eyelashes. Dangus, the tortie, is there too, splayed by her side. Her eyes are closed, but something about the look on her face, relaxed, but too serene for sleep, makes him think she’s awake. He doesn’t make any noise, but Lup still stirs and turns her face toward him.

“Hey,” she says softly. “Did I wake you up?”

He shakes his head.

“The sun feels nice.” He doesn’t know what she sees in his face, but whatever it is makes her frown and sit up. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, but his throat has gone tight. “I uh, sorry. Shit.” There’s tears on his face suddenly, and he hurriedly rubs his eyes with the collar of his shirt. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, uh.”

Lup rises to her feet and crosses toward him. Dangus chirrups and gets up too, streaking off into the kitchen, clearly annoyed by the disturbance. “Hey,” she says again, now serious and alert. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry, I.” Barry takes a deep breath to steady himself, but it seems to go on forever, and when he exhales he’s crying. He turns away. “Shit. I’m so sorry.”

She takes him by the shoulders. “Barry, look at me. Hey.” He forces himself to look up. “What are you apologizing for?”

“No, nothing. I’m just.” A breath. “I’m so fucking sorry that I. I couldn’t find you. I tried so hard.” Lup looks stricken, and it’s too much. He ducks his head again. “Taako and I, we looked for months, I. I’m sorry you were stuck in that stupid umbrella for so long. I can’t even imagine what that was like. I can’t—” He shudders, and opens his mouth, but no more words come.

“Barry,” Lup says sternly, and then squeezes his shoulders when he doesn’t respond. “Look at me.” He does. Her eyes are big and watery. “That wasn’t your fault. None of that was your fault. I was the dingus who made an umbrella that ate powerful magic after _literally_ becoming a physical embodiment of powerful magic, so that one’s on me.” She laughs, and it’s too sharp and too loud, but her hand is gentle when she touches his cheek. “And I’m sorry. I think I knew...that you’d looked for me, but I didn’t think…”

Barry shakes his head, cutting her off. “No, that wasn’t your fault.”

Her face softens. She loops her hand around to cradle the back of his neck. “Were you...angry with me? When I didn’t come back?”

It’s not the first time she’s asked this question. She’s been asking it for months, only without words: in apologetic glances, in three-course meals, in her arm wrapped tight around him as he’s drifting off to sleep. It will, however, be the first time he’s answered it. And he thinks he’s finally ready to.

“I was angry,” he admits. “At first. I was angry that you didn’t tell me where you were going, or why. Angry that you didn’t...trust me to know. But. After I was done being angry, I was just...scared, Lup. I was so scared. Because I thought that if it was just that you had died, you would have come back to me.”

“I would,” she says, intent. “I will. Barry—”

“So I didn’t understand. I thought...maybe I’d done something wrong. Something to push you away. I racked my head over it for months, but still, I. I wanted to keep looking, because even if I found you and you never wanted to see me again, I needed to know you were safe.”

Lup looks like he's slapped her across the face. Barry forces himself to finish his thought.

“I’ve done my fair share of awful things over the past seven years—things that should probably keep me up at night. But honestly, I think the thing that’s the hardest for me to forget is the way that I...doubted you. You didn’t—you don’t deserve it. I know you wouldn’t leave Taako like that, and I—”

She’d begun to shake her head halfway through his third sentence, and now she barrels over him. “I can’t believe you, fucking—I can’t believe you’re feeling guilty about _being mad at me_. I’m mad at me! To say things got royally fucked up is the understatement of the century. _Literally_.” Barry opens his mouth to reply, which is as long as it takes for Lup’s anger to topple over sorrow. She presses her palms hard against her eyes and chokes out, “ _Fuck_. I...I’m sorry I ever made you feel like that. I should have left a longer _fucking_ note, I—I fucked up so bad. Sometimes it feels like I’m never gonna be able to shake off how fucking bad, and everything’s just gonna be wrong, forever. I can see the way you’ve changed. The way Taako’s changed, and I can’t stop thinking that I. I. I—”

Barry gently pulls her hands away from her face. He tucks his body up against hers, guiding her head to his shoulder, and he holds her as she shakes. Quiet, except for her gasping breath in his ear.

Finally, he says, “This is the same.”

She presses her forehead into his neck and muffles a sob. He curves a hand along her shoulder blade. Her body is still warm from the sunlight.

“Not so much has changed.” He promises. “Nothing that we can’t fix, or learn about together.”

There’s a silent moment, and then she nods against his shoulder. She takes a long, rattling breath, and then pulls back slightly, rubbing her eyes. “Fuck, babe, you got me all emotional and I haven’t even made breakfast yet. You know I need protein before I feel things.”

Barry laughs quietly, which was surely her intention. “Sorry,” he says, and she tugs on his ear.

“No more of that.” She scolds, and then folds her arms back down over his head, leaning all her weight on him. His arms wrap around her waist, his head tucking into her neck. It’s a familiar gesture, born from years and years of moments like this one. Barry exhales, so long and earnest that he feels it when Lup takes it up in her own body, and they breathe together.

They will have to talk about this soon: all the time they’ve spent apart, and how it’s changed them. They have years of healing to do, and perhaps they will start today. Perhaps Barry will lead her to the kitchen table, and tell her about the lives he spent looking for her—dying for her. Perhaps she will tell him about the curtained room. Or perhaps they will walk into town for breakfast, and leave the heavy stuff for another morning.

Barry is no stranger to uncertain futures, and these ones don’t scare him. For now, he is happy with his: the warmth of Lup’s body, and her weight against his.

  


(Angus does cry happy tears when he eventually learns the names of the cats. Taako refuses to call them anything but Agnus and Dagnus.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends this series. <3 I have a couple more TAZ fics in the works, so stay tuned for those!  
> Also, though I didn't plan this, happy Valentine's Day! I hope you get to spend some time with a loved one, or just some time pampering yourself today!!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter [@squaasha](https://twitter.com/squaasha/) or tumblr [@starfleetofficial!](http://starfleetofficial.tumblr.com/)


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